Last weekend I took a 12 hour car ride to Houston to attend the wedding of a long-time internet friend. I took Friday off work, and left Atlanta right after work on Thursday. Caught rush hour traffic both leaving Atlanta at 7pm and arriving in Houston at 9am.
The ride to Houston was pretty interesting. On the way over we were driving the entire way at night. Upon entering Alabama, I noticed that the state highway signs kind of look like Alabama has a nutsack.
It’s just compounded by the fact that the silhouette of the state is resized poorly, so it looks all sad and stumpy with a nutsack.
There is absolutely nothing along i85 in Alabama. The first stop of the trip was at Victoryland, which was apparently a greyhound racing track and two gas stations. While at the gas station, I saw a beaten up pickup truck full of scrap metal and a guy exiting the convenience store carrying a 40 and a half gallon of milk. I was later informed by my tattooist friend that Victoryland has a convenience store that sells draught beer in gallon jugs. I’m assuming that was at the other store.
In Alabama, we also passed through Waugh. This is now on my list of terrible things to name cities somewhere near Guelph, ON. They both just sound like noises your body makes while sick. Ugh. We drove through Alabama’s nutsack, where I saw a truck hauling “show chickens” and into Mississippi, where I promptly fell asleep.
I woke back up somewhere on the bayou crossing an endless bridge. Southern Louisiana is a lot like southern Georgia, with all the swamp land. However I found on the drive back that their swamp land is a lot more water and less peat than Georgia’s swamp land. It was nice being in a state with french city names that actually pronounce them correctly. I still cringe when I hear people in Georgia pronounce LaFayette “Luh Fayit”.
The bridge over the bayou lulled me back to sleep and I woke up a bit again on the bridge over the Mississippi River. It’s this gigantic arch, and at the top of it you look out over this gigantic industrial area. It was really pretty at night, like a city decorated with christmas lights. It was not so impressive coming back through during the day.
Texas was interesting. Within 5 miles of entering it, I saw an example of every single Texan cliché there is, minus a gun store. Texas also has THE WORST ROADS EVER. Georgia’s roads are pretty great, we’re kind of known for our well maintained roads. Every other state we went through, the roads got progressively worse. In Louisiana, the dismounts from bridges were almost bottoming out the car. All of that was just in preparation for Texas. Almost all of i10 is under construction, so there are death walls with no shoulder down miles of road. On top of that, the lanes aren’t painted, they’re marked off with cat’s eyes and strips of corrugation. They’re impossible to see during the day and vibrate you car like it’s going to fall apart if you need to switch lanes. I was wishing I could fall back asleep to escape the terror that was traveling on those roads.
The GPS failed and took us to the reception site instead of the hotel, which was a nice introduction to the ghetto public transit in Houston. They have trolleys that look like the future from the 80s, and they really screw up traffic. As sad as Atlanta’s public transport is, at least we have trains that don’t effect traffic.
Finally, we arrived at the hotel. The hotel was amazing!
After a bit of a nap, it was time to get ready and head to the Natural Science Museum. The ceremony was to be held in the butterfly house. It was a really cute venue.
The traffic was pretty bad, so we arrived a bit late. That ended up being okay, though, as the ceremony also started late. No one wanted to go into the butterfly house because it was so humid, so we all stood around in the lobby. Eventually, the family members found out that we had only met the bride in person about 3 hours before the ceremony and kind of freaked out.
Eventually it was time for the ceremony to start, so we all filed into the butterfly house. It was a cute, geeky ceremony full of inside jokes and a reference to the konami code.
It was also pretty dark by the time the ceremony started so out of the hundred pictures I took, only about 5 of them turned out because I wasn’t using flash. The ceremony was short and sweet, and then it was time to head to the reception venue that was down the block at the Czech hall.
We were actually the first people to arrive, but circled the parking lot and then got stuck at a light that refused to change for 5 mins, before we just ran it. The reception venue was pretty decadent.
The couple’s grand entrance
The staircase was epic. There was a piano underneath it, and the bar was right next to the piano.
The bride made all of the bouquets herself out of clay. They were lovely.
The rug was also pretty epic. Every single thing was just covered in baroque decoration. Apparently the space was chosen so they wouldn’t have to pay to decorate, which is a great idea.
The dinner was really nice. I had a salad and lemon rosemary chicken. I noticed I was the only one at the table that didn’t scrape off all the herbs, but I found it pretty yummy. The cake was a black forest cake and it was HUGE. The bride and I were the only two people who managed to finish eating a full slice.
Although I was dreading the drive, I’m glad we went. It was nice to meet the bride and groom in person, we all got along really well and it was pretty fun.
Driving that far west (which is the farthest west I’ve ever been) also opened the door to me trying Jack in the Box and Whataburger, neither of which we have here in Georgia. I do have to say that I found Whataburger tasty, I had this buffalo chicken sandwich and it was super yummy.
crossposted from fuzzdecay.com. 
